


Souls A'Fire

by Somedrunkpirate



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dreams are fun to write, Established Relationship, Limbo, Limbo is better, M/M, Non-Chronological, POV Eames (Inception), angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 00:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somedrunkpirate/pseuds/Somedrunkpirate
Summary: “How long has it been?” Arthur asks, cuffs undone, looking just past him.Eames smiles and tucks his cards back in his pocket. A red die bleeds out on the table.“I don’t know.”





	Souls A'Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Title and ficlet inspired by the song Souls A'Fire by matt corby

It’s storming. The windows flash white as the sky streaks light. The smoke dusting the ceiling form strange shadows around him. Eames takes another drag from his cigarette. He feels the heat at his fingertips, but it doesn’t matter because the room is on fire around him. Eames breathes. It’s storming outside. The sea is calling.

—

“How long has it been?” Arthur asks, cuffs undone, looking just past him.

Eames smiles and tucks his cards back in his pocket. A red die bleeds out on the table.

“I don’t know.”

—

It started with the sea.

It always starts with the sea.

—

Eames remembers the taste of tea on his tongue. The smooth sting of lemon— he didn’t add it, but Yusuf likes it— lingers, even when he hasn’t drunk anything in days. It hadn’t been necessary.

A tea kettle whistles beside him. Eames gets up from the sand and walks into the small kitchen, tending to the hot water and going through the motions of making tea. He doesn’t drink it. He watches it cool, and throws it back into the sea.

—

He wanders, following a path and walking it out. His thoughts find memories long lost. He stumbles over paintings, jewellery, even a cat. Cuffs weigh heavy around his wrists, but he knows how to escape; how to push the latch to the side and feel the click of freedom against his skin. He had been proud of that once. Eames walks deeper into the maze. Sand crushes underfoot.

—

“You’re burning up,” a voice says, “come on, drink.”

Something cool presses to his lips, and water trickles down. Eames drinks, greedily.

“Easy, easy.” The glass disappears. “I’m not cleaning up your vomit again, Eames.”

Eames coughs, clears his throat to rumble, “but that’s what I pay you for, darling.” He tries to push himself up, but a hand keeps him pressed to— a mattress. It’s a mattress.

Arthur chuckles. “A dead man can’t pay,” he says, “much less a lost one.”

“Hmm?” Eames blinks his eyes open at Arthur’s words. It’s too dry between his lids. His vision is blurry. He can’t see Arthur well; just a dark shape, a warm hand on his chest.

“Save your strength, Eames,” Arthur says. The hand leaves his chest and folds over Eames’ eyes, bringing darkness, relief.

“Whatever you say, darling,” Eames replies, leaning into the pressure. The fingers are gentle over his skin. Soft, warm, safe.

Until it’s not.

A nail scrapes over his eyebrow. A palm presses over his mouth.

Arthur’s hands turns cool, colder, ice piercing through his eyes. Eames gasps against it, struggling. His eyes are frozen shut. He tries to push Arthur away but he feels his arms crumbling, slowly turning into sand.

“Don’t burn,” Arthur whispers, and then he’s gone.

—

“You should have worn a suit,” Eames chides.

Arthur allows him a sideways smile. “I thought casual was best, for the occasion.” He flickers his gaze from Eames to the tables beside them, the room at large. Waiting for something. Eames isn’t worried.

The restaurant is empty. Everything is white; the chairs they sit in, the food on their plate. From floor to ceiling. Nothing could hide here.

Arthur takes a bite from his— his—

His fork clinks against his glass, like a bell echoing through space.

“What did he say to you?” Arthur asks him innocently, as if he’s commenting on the weather.

Eames narrows his eyes at him. Lightning strikes the sky, but far away. Arthur doesn’t know what’s coming yet. “What do you mean?”

Arthur sighs. He places his fork on his plate and looks at Eames with a steady gaze. Waiting.

Eames tastes tea on his tongue. The words spill over. “He told me not to burn.”

“Oh,” Arthur says, raising an eyebrow. He’s drinking his coffee in slow sips, thoughtful. Eames smells the rich scent and wants to steal it out of his hands. “Do you think you should listen to him?”

Eames looks away, pressing his lips together. His hands search for something, but they find nothing but white, white cloth. He digs his toes in the sand beneath. “You told me I shouldn’t.”

“Good,” Arthur says after a moment. “I don’t remember that.”

Eames smiles, the meanest smile he can find. “Serves you right.”

Arthur’s disapproving expression is the last thing he sees before a wave hits them. Eames dives in, and drifts.

—

Someone gave him these cigarettes. They are important.

Eames knows because every time he throws them away, they come back to his pocket.

Even the sea won’t take them.

—

Arthur smokes with his back towards him. He doesn’t smoke often, only the harshest of jobs deserve an Arthur frayed. And that’s what he is— frayed. His hair loose, curling into his neck. His shirt undone and shoes untied. Tired, just… tired.

Eames walks around him and opens a window. The fresh night air takes the thick smoke and pulls it outside. Tiny drops of rain hit Eames’ face as he pulls the blinds up.

“It’s a risk,” Arthur says, voice rough.

Eames slides his arms around his waist, feels Arthur’s next breath against his chest. “Isn’t it always?” he presses into Arthur’s neck, and tastes a shiver on his tongue.

Arthur huffs, doesn’t answer. He doesn’t push him away. Doesn’t tell him ‘not right now,’ or ‘after the job.’ This is how Eames knows that Arthur is frayed, truly and thoroughly so.

“We don’t have to do it,” Eames murmurs. “We can wait. We can find something else.”

Arthur sighs. Inch by inch he untangles himself. Every piece of him slowly melting into the embrace. Eames smiles and waits.

The cigarette only lasts a minute longer. Arthur straightens up and Eames lets go. He doesn’t fit like that— all harsh lines and professionality. Eames knows when to step away.

“You better now, darling?” Eames asks as a last curve. The air between them colder, as the wind pushes through the window— howling.

“I need coffee,” Arthur says, and begins to stride away. But one hand lingers, holding Eames’ fingers until the distance forces them apart. Eames smiles.

“I’ll follow you in a second, darling,” Eames calls after him. “I need one myself too.”

Arthur snorts. There is a pause before something hits Eames in the side of the head.

“Keep ‘em,” Arthur says, and then he’s gone.

Eames bucks to take the packet of cigarettes of the ground. The sound of a coffee maker hums on the background. Eames takes a breath and lights a flame.

—

He’d swam for days. His arms ached so long that he didn’t know how it felt without pain. Without the need to keep himself afloat, constantly. Eames curses and a rush of seawater fills his mouth. He retches and spits it out— just his luck not to land on the fucking beach.

—

Arthur had made a plan for this. Eames trusts this memory with the entirety of his soul, because Arthur always makes a plan for things. Arthur only knows the alphabet as a source for the extensive contingency plans he creates: plan A, plan B, plan C. He even uses roman numerals sometimes, just to make it interesting.

Eames traces the letters into the sand. Paints sums and calculations. Writes questions before the sea makes them drown.

_Where are you darling?_

_Where did you go?_

_What am I?_

_Are you real?_

_Have we ever been?_

The sea is a dutiful friend. Every morning the slate is clean and Eames can start again. It never leaves answers, though. Only packets of cigarettes.

—

One morning— evening— day, Eames wonders if he ever knew what tea tasted like, or if he just made it up. Most things are these days.

He watches sandcastles crumble, memories turn into dust.

There was a kiss.

A kiss too salty to be real.

—

Eames writes a name in the sand.

The sea doesn’t take it.

There are footsteps going through the lines.

—

“I don’t know how to do this anymore, darling,” Eames says. He’s throwing a blue die from hand to hand. Arthur watches him, legs crossed, sitting on the floor. “You’ve got me spoiled with all those plans of yours.”

Eames stops following the die with his eyes and looks at Arthur instead.

Arthur is crying. Softly.

Eames watches a tear trickle down his chin. “Not much use are they, plans, if I can’t remember them,” he says. The die drops to the ground, clattering against the floorboards. “Not much use at all.”

Arthur presses his face in his hands. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he murmurs and— oh. That hurts. His voice rips a small piece out of Eames’ chest. He knows this sound. This is Arthur breaking.

“I shouldn’t have— I shouldn’t have— I shouldn’t have—“

He’s threading his fingers through his hair now. Pulling desperately. It hurts to watch. It destroys them both.

Eames is in motion at once. Catches Arthur’s arms by the wrists and makes him stop— stop hurting himself.

“Darling, darling, darling,” Eames mumbles, panicked and fast. “Darling, don’t do that, don’t do that. Just tell me what to do, please. I need you. Just tell me what to do.”

Arthur looks at him, eyes wide. His face flushed from crying and his mouth half-way into a heavy gasp. He surges up and kisses Eames greedily, as if he’s drinking him in. His lips are wet and soft and—

“Don’t listen to him,” Arthur hisses, between harsh kisses and ragged breaths. “Don’t listen.”

—

Eames follows the footsteps like a kid on a treasure hunt. Every step his heart thuds louder, every corner he expects to be the end.

It’s only when it starts raining that he find what he’s looking for.

Thunder rumbles in the distance. Eames looks up to follow a flash of light in the sky. But there is something wrong about it, something unreal; there are no clouds above him, only a dark ocean dripping down. The storm is the sea. The sea is the sky.

“Strange, isn’t it,” Arthur says. He’s pressed against Eames, playing with a button on his shirt. Eames feels his breath curling around his ear. “I’ve always wondered what your mind would look like without your control over it all. You’re creative by nature, but this—“

Eames sees it now, as Arthur speaks. The city made of sand, the sea suspended, the silver flashes of lighting streaking through the deep water above. It’s as beautiful as it is cold.

Eames shivers as a looming shadow of a whale passes over the ground, covering them both. Schools of fish fly overhead. Seawater trickles down, bringing droplets of salt into Arthur’s wet hair.

They will be drenched soon.

“It’s a pity that I’ve destroyed it all,” Arthur muses. “I wish I hadn’t, but I’ve had to accept what I’ve done.”

Something cold breaches Eames’ stomach. He doesn’t bleed. A wave curls and lashes out, grazing his head.

“I would say I’m sorry,” Arthur says icily, “but I’ve forgotten how to be.”

His hand reaches into Eames’ chest.

The ocean plunges down.

—

Arthur had only told him a little about the shade that had haunted Cobb.

He’d said that it wasn’t Mal.

He’d said that he didn’t always believe that, in the dream.

“Guilt doesn’t make a person, but it’s hard to remember that.”

—

Eames is used to it now.

Arthur is cold to the touch.

Eames kisses him anyway.

Arthur kills him again.

—

“How many times now?”

“Do you think I’m counting?”

—

It had been Arthur’s plan; breaching into a destroyed mind to organise it, make a broken person whole again so that they can answer the questions their client has. But the man had been through too much, and he’d been used to being broken, after being it for so many years. It was the only thing he knew to be.

Two decades is a long time, to hold the pieces that make you function and not believe you’ve always been like this. That you were born in ruins.

Some people might have a point in this.

The man fought his reparations bravely, and Eames was too weak to win his own.

Arthur got out. Eames stayed. Something was left behind.

In the end, it was his screams that took him down; desperate pleading that pushed Eames through the veil.

The dream had made guilt into a monster, and it tore Eames into shreds.

Maybe that’s why he had to swim for so long.

—

“Eames!”

“Eames, please, no. NO.”

“Oh god.”

“I will never forgive myself. I can never forgive myself—“

“I shouldn’t have— I shouldn’t have—“

“It should have been me.”

—

They’re in bed together. Eames had built it himself. He’d created many blankets, in case it would warm Arthur up.

“Will you ever come here?” Eames asks Arthur, who’s stretched out languid and naked, a smile on his face.

“I don’t think he dares to,” Arthur muses. “Afraid to break you more.”

Eames hums, thoughtful, and puts a cigarette to his lips. He looks out over the ocean, hears it calling. “I suppose I should come to you then.”

Arthur laughs loudly. His eyes flash with light. “I broke you too much for that.”

“Ha,” Eames huffs. “Now, darling, you should know better than to challenge me. I’m stubborn like that.”

Darkness curls around them and Arthur glides from the bed. “I’d love to see you try.”

For a second Eames thinks he’s going to kiss him again, but Arthur just shrugs his clothes on and then steps into the dark.

“Goodbye,” Eames says softly.

He means it.

—

He builds his last house on the hill, looking out onto the ocean. Wood this time, something that will burn easily.

He waits on the storm and lights everything aflame.

After all the cold, the heat is a nice chance.

Eames burns slowly. The waves try to breach the door, but they can’t.

“I forgive you,” Eames tells it.

It doesn’t take long then, for everything to crumble into ash.

—

His eyes open of their own accord. They are dry, but differently. No sand stuck between the lids.

Arthur is there, a dark shape in the corner of a white, white room— frayed.

He’s mumbling, murmuring. Pulling at his hair.

“Don’t do that, darling,” Eames rumbles. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

Arthur’s head snaps up. He gasps, blinks and then stumbles to the edge of the bed.

“Eames?”

“Darling,” Eames says, as gently as he can. “Here I am.”

Arthur sucks in a trembling breath. “I’m so sorry. I’m so—“

Eames places his hand on his cheek. Traces the warm, flushed skin with the edge of this thumb.

Arthur stills, leans in, and breathes.

Eames pulls him closer and presses a kiss to the corner of his lips.

“I forgive you, my darling. I forgive you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just chilling one evening, listening to this song, catch myself thinking 'ey this would make a nice limbo metaphor'. An hour later I have a ficlet on my hands. Thank you SC for the early eyes on it, and the ever amazing Brookbond for beta'ing it for me. 
> 
> It's strange to come back to an old ship. It's almost a bit like coming home. I feel like I've learned a lot while making the longer fics in TMFU, and this fic was actually really easy to write. I had fun :D It's been a while since I had that from writing fic. 
> 
> Imma be diving back into my dnd worldbuilding and/or original stuff. But I might post here and there when the inspiration strikes.


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